The sad path to Thunder Road

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, April 20, 2003

IF ANYONE can testify with authority about the power of alcohol advertising, it is the group of teenage alcoholics receiving intensive treatment at Thunder Road, an inconspicuous residential center in North Oakland.

In addition to outpatient services, the acclaimed center provides 50 hospital beds for young people ages 12 to 17 who need residential treatment. Residents stay for up to a year. Despite the enormous demand for services like these, it is the only center of its kind in the state.

One 17-year-old told us how he started drinking Remy Martin cognac when he was 14. He then moved on to low-budget Carlo Rossi wine, and eventually to Seagrams gin, becoming increasingly violent in the process. "Every time I'd get depressed, or into an argument, that's where I'd go -- to gin," he told us.

He ended up at Thunder Road after assaulting a police officer who had been called to his house to restrain him. "I had to make the decision to come here to get myself clean, because either I was going to get killed, or someone else was," he said.

The teenager said the profusion of liquor ads compounded his drinking problem. "You see the ads, and the next thing you know, you look on the shelves, and you start thinking, 'well, let me try it, let me see how I feel,' " he said, referring to ads in the liquor stores near his house. "The next thing you know you ask someone to buy it for you."

California limits the amount of ads of any type in liquor and convenience store windows to 33 percent of their exterior space. In many communities, the law is barely enforced. Others have gone further, and shown how a cooperative approach can yield results. In Vacaville, teens from the city's Fighting Back Program together with police sat down with liquor store owners to persuade them to heed the city's 15 percent limit on window advertising, and to voluntarily remove alluring ads inside the store as well.

California actually has a law (Section 25664 of the Business and Professions Code) that prohibits ads that encourage minors to drink. But the law's weakness is that it requires the state to show that advertisers intend to reach young people -- which is almost impossible to prove. "In that form, it is a worthless statute," said James Mosher, a lawyer at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, which conducted the study for the Georgetown center.

Mosher says the intent provision should be stripped from California's law. That would bring it into line with similar laws in 11 other states, including Alabama.

California gets kudos for prohibiting alcohol companies from offering prizes for contests like the one which awarded a grand prize -- a pool table --

to anyone who collected at least 5,000 Budweiser bottle caps. Who other than a college fraternity would be likely to win such a contest?

But like New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, California could also prohibit advertising on college campuses that encourage binge drinking on spring break. Like Florida and Michigan, it could restrict alcohol sponsorship of college or school events. Like Illinois, Ohio, Oregon and 10 other states, it could give state agencies the authority to regulate youth-oriented alcohol television and radio commercials on in-state broadcasting outlets.

Californians must look closely at what they can do to make it unnecessary for children as young as 13 to seek treatment for alcoholism at Thunder Road. For these young people, being removed completely from outside influences -- home, peers, seductive images -- is their only hope of recovery. They are the lucky ones. Most children have no such option.